Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (History of Science Series) [Kindle Edition]
Author: John M. Riddle | Language: English | ISBN: B00CUP0G7K | Format: PDF, EPUB
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For 1,600 years Dioscorides (ca. AD 40–80) was regarded as the foremost authority on drugs. He knew mild laxatives and strong purgatives, analgesics for headaches, antiseptics for wounds, emetics to rid one of ingested poisons, chemotherapy agents for cancer treatments, and even oral contraceptives. Why, then, have his works remained obscure in recent centuries? Because of one small oversight (Dioscorides himself thought it was self-evident): he failed to describe his method for organizing drugs by their affinities. This omission led medical authorities to use his materials as a guide to pharmacy while overlooking Dioscorides' most valuable contribution—his empirically derived method for observing and classifying drugs by clinical testing.
Dioscorides' De materia medica, a five-volume work, was written in the first century. Here revealed for the first time is the thesis that Dioscorides wrote more than a lengthy guide book. He wrote a great work of science. He had said that he discovered the natural order and would demonstrate it by his arrangement of drugs from plants, minerals, and animals. Until John M. Riddle's pathfinding study, no one saw the genius of his system. Botanists from the eighteenth century often attempted to find his unexplained method by identifying the sequences of his plants according to the Linnean system but, while there are certain patterns, there remained inexplicable incoherencies. However, Dioscorides' natural order as set down in De materia medica was determined by drug affinities as detected by his acute, clinical ability to observe drug reactions in and on the body. So remarkable was his ability to see relationships that, in some cases, he saw what we know to be common chemicals shared by plants of the same and related species and other natural product drugs from animal and mineral sources.
Western European and Islamic medicine considered Dioscorides the foremost authority on drugs, just as Hippocrates is regarded as the Father of Medicine. They saw him point the way but only described the end of his finger, despite the fact that in the sixteenth century alone there were over one hundred books published on him. If he had explained what he thought to be self-evident, then science, especially chemistry and medicine, would almost certainly have developed differently. In this culmination of over twenty years of research, Riddle employs modern science and anthropological studies innovatively and cautiously to demonstrate the substance to Dioscorides' authority in medicine.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine- File Size: 10764 KB
- Print Length: 328 pages
- Publisher: University of Texas Press; Reprint edition (May 17, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CUP0G7K
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #589,226 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Since the time of Dioscorides, which was in the first century of the Christian era, there has certainly been a lot of historical "water under the bridge", and scientific perspectives and attitudes on medicine and pharmacy have changed radically, and many times over. And so, the whole scientific and medical worldview of Dioscorides' time was radically different from our own, including most of the basic scientific concepts and paradigms used to understand medicine. Looking at Dioscorides through a modern glass, using the available tools of modern botany, chemistry, medical history and archeology, John M. Riddle, a history professor, does his best to unravel the medical mysteries of Dioscorides, who has had an unparalleled influence on the entire field of medicine and pharmacy in Western civilization; Dioscorides was definitely a man way ahead of his time, and his five volume magnum opus, De Materia Medica, was the supreme authority on herbs and medicines for over 1500 years.
Considering the fact that Mr. Riddle is a history professor and an academician, and is not an herbalist or traditional healer with practical experience in using herbs and natural medicinal substances to heal, and is confined to the academic tools of modern theoretical science to make his observations and judgments, he has done a marvelous job of interpreting Dioscorides for the modern reader. I must admit that I learned a lot by reading this work, and found it to be a treasure trove of fascinating facts and useful information - perhaps some of it more useful to the natural healer than even Mr. Riddle understands.
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